Daily Archives: January 9, 2012

It’s getting really hard to be topical. In the issue of New Yorker magazine dated January 9, 2012 – that’s today — the lead article is about the rise of Newt Gingrich.

Newt who? Newt Gingrich? Is he the guy who thought that if he stuck four fingers between the buttons in his shirt, he actually became Napoleon?

(By the way, America, Newt Gingrich is very disappointed in you. I just thought you should know that.)

But this note is not about Newt Gingrich; it’s about Rick Santorum. Who remains topical until 8 p.m. tomorrow, when the polls close in New Hampshire. Because New Hampshire Republicans are finding it difficult to square a Santorum state ban on contraception with the motto “Live Free or Die.”

But this note is not about contraception; it’s about weather forecasts. Which are always topical.

Rick Santorum tried to ban weather forecasts. Actually, not all weather forecasts. Just government weather forecasts.

By the way, Santorum introduced this bill a few months after four different hurricanes hit Central Florida, where I live. In one of those hurricanes, a big chunk of my roof collapsed, right into the living room. So weather forecasts are sort of important in my community. A matter of life and death, you might say.

Now you must be thinking, “Wow, that guy Santorum is a REAL conservative.” Santorum recognizes that government weather forecasts are meteorological socialism; they are a serious infringement on your constitutional right not to know whether it will rain tomorrow. Santorum sees that weather forecasts are a government takeover of the skies. In fact, Santorum is such an astute and profound conservative thinker that he probably realizes that traffic lights are a government takeover of the roads.

But this note is not about traffic lights. It’s about Rick Santorum and government weather forecasts. And why Rick Santorum tried to ban them.

Here’s why. It’s because AccuWeather is a commercial weather forecasting company, and AccuWeather employees gave Santorum more than $5,000 in campaign contributions. Then he introduced the bill. Which subsequently and consequently led to Santorum being named as one of Congress’s “most corrupt politicians.” Which is saying a lot.

I can picture the conversation:

AccuWeather lobbyist: “Here is $5000 in bundled contributions from AccuWeather. Now introduce a bill to ban government weather forecasts.”

Santorum: “OK. Sure. Why not? Whatever. I love this cheesecake.”

And that is what I’ve seen over and over again. This thing called “conservative ideology” has degenerated to the point where it exists simply to spew out rationalizations for something else entirely: whatever the corporate lobbyists want.

A topic that will remain topical, I’m sure, well after the polls close in New Hampshire tomorrow night.

Like this:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 35,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

“If you think that I should spend my entire campaign carefully choosing how everything I say relates to people, as opposed to saying my own experience and telling my own experience, that would make me a very different person than I am,” he said. “I’m going to tell people my own experiences in life, and I realize they’re not the same as everybody else.” But, Mitt, you are applying for becoming President of a country of primarily poor people, many without jobs, young people with poor schools getting their education budgets cut, people who cannot afford healthcare, people who are having problems with housing, buying groceries, caring for our elderly, etc. IF WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY DOES NOT RELATE TO US, why should we invest our time in listening to you tell us “your experience?” We know all we need to know about you rich people from the movies and TV! We use “your experience” to escape our miserable existence, not improve our lives! We are looking for a President who will tell us how his mission in life is to improve the human condition in America for the majority of the people, not the “TOP 1%,” who are doing very well. From you own words, we don’t need a Mitt Romney!

Rick Santorum was asked what he would do if he had a gay son. Rick said he would give him “love and respect.” Crumbs from his father’s life. No equal opportunity to marry the one he loves and no opportunity to have a family raising adopted children. Santorum’s and Romney’s America: Land of the free, home of the brave. Full happiness and rights…for heterosexuals, only!

“WisconsinDemocratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin wants to be the first openly gay candidate elected to the United States Senate. In an exclusive interview with The National Memo over the weekend, she made clear how she means to go about doing it: running straight at the Tea Party.

Suggesting the GOP will face an historic rebuke in the 2012 elections just two years after Tea Party activists helped to sweep it into power, Baldwin pinned her candidacy on the two pillars of the modern progressive movement that have both faced concerted assaults from newly-elected Midwestern governors in the past year: strong unions and a robust welfare state.

“I can promise you 2012 is a very different election year,” she said Saturday. “When [Governor] Scott Walker and [Congressman] Paul Ryan started to attack everything we hold dear as Wisconsinites, our rich progressive history, our belief in a strong retirement, people in Wisconsin stood up and became organized and engaged.” Walker led a successful effort to eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public employees and Ryan’s Medicare privatization scheme passed in the U.S. House only to die in the Senate last year.” [Click here for entire article.]